“Should we be worried about losing our indigenous crops because of genetically modified organisms (GMOs)?” The answer is an outright No.

There have been arguments that the introduction of genetically modified crops would result in loss of indigenous resources as farmers, consumers and everyone in the agricultural value chain are believed to abandon their indigenous varieties in favor of GM crops.

The reality is that no indigenous varieties of any crop will be lost when GM crops are introduced for the latter and other non-GM crops can co-exist. GM crops bring only one or a few traits of interest while all the other farmer favored traits are preserved in the new variety. Our scientist in the national gene bank also regularly conserves crop germplasm since conventional crop breeding itself reduces germplasm diversity GM crops have been grown for more than 33 years across the world and there has never been any incidents recorded of them replacing indigenous varieties.

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It is not possible to say no indigenous crop would be existent today since all would have been replaced by conventionally bred crop varieties because farmers have continued selecting and improving their indigenous varieties every year for centuries. Besides, GM crops are not necessarily new varieties; rather they are existing varieties improved with selected traits such as pest resistance, herbicide resistance or drought tolerance.

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